Thomas Tallis

Then there's essentially a repeat of the first phrase of the piece before Udegard kind of gently closes the door on the journey he's taking you on.

What I find really fascinating about Love Me is that the composer doesn't just take this old Thomas Tallis piece and modernize it.

He starts bringing all these different musical worlds into the same piece.

You've got 16th century English sacred music, Norwegian folk music, and then remarkably, a Lule Sámi version of the American folk song Wayfaring Stranger.

Music, too, was an instrument of courtly display.

Thomas Tallis composed his famed Spem in Alium with forty voices for an English choir, creating a soundscape that filled the vast halls and echoed Henry's ambition to dominate all art forms.

William Byrd, while secretly Catholic, was employed at Elizabeth's chapel but also served under Henry's earlier reign.

Some say he hid messages within his compositions for covert believers.

On today's date in 1573, Queen Elizabeth I celebrated her 40th birthday.

According to some musicologists, the music-loving monarch received as a birthday gift a motet for 40 voices by Thomas Tallis, titled in Latin, Spem in Allium, which translates as Hope in All Things.

Queen Elizabeth was certainly fond of Tallis, awarding him special gifts and privileges, despite his remaining a steadfast Roman Catholic throughout her reign, when being a Catholic in Protestant England was a very risky business indeed.

Other musicologists contend that this famous motet was actually written for the coronation of Elizabeth's predecessor, the Catholic Queen Mary Tudor.

Still others say, no, no, the motet was commissioned by a patriotic British nobleman who challenged Tallis to write a work as good as or better than a contemporary Italian composer's 40-voice motet.

The truth is, we just don't know for sure why Tallis composed this intricate and glorious music.

We do know that in a dangerous time for anyone with strong religious convictions, Tallis lived to the ripe old age of 80.

His epitaph reads, As he did live, so he did die, in mild and quiet sort.

If I was like on a desert island, what album would I bring? There's a piece of music that was used in Mastering Commander.

It's called Fantasy on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.

And I don't know when it was.

It's an old classical work.

Fortunately for posterity, not all Reformation-era rulers were so bloodthirsty.

The English Catholic composer Thomas Tallis managed to keep his head through the reigns of alternating Catholic and Protestant monarchs.

And the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I admired and supported the music of William Byrd, despite his openly Catholic sympathies.

Composer's Datebook is produced by APM, American Public Media, in collaboration with the American Composers Forum, reminding you that all music was once new.

There may be a reason of which more anon.

Anthony Wood tells us he was bred up to music under Thomas Tallis, and the eminent church musician was godfather to Byrd's son, Thomas.

Byrd was also Tallis's executor.

In early life, the subject of my lecture was organist of Lincoln, in which city he was married on the 14th of September, 1568.

So you have polyphonic music.

You have a guy like Thomas Tallis, who's a composer, a, a British composer in the 16th century.

Can you tell I'm excited about this?

[laughs]

I really get wound up in this.

I, you know, I, I love, I love when this touches a great, greater world of literature and performance.

You know, Thomas Tallis writes these wonderful motets where he just stacks voice on voice on voice on voice-

Mm, mm-hmm

Who would be your choice from history as the second keynote speaker after Nathan?

Well, I mean, part of me wants to say like, agnes strickland because she made so much of this popular victorian writer and she's because i feel like she would enjoy seeing kind of the fruits of her creation because she's really the one who popularized so much of this during the victorian period and her books on anne boleyn and all this so i feel like her um But somebody from the Tudor period would have to be Thomas Tallis.

They called him Teflon Thomas, Teflon Tallis, because he managed to get through four reigns writing church music And survived.

And I don't know, I would love for him, he could give us such a window into the Reformation and talking about all the different changes.

And what about the last film or maybe series that you watched?

master and commander the far side of the world it's russell crowe he's a commander in the royal navy ship in the nelson napoleon era another great historical setting but also for any fans of tudor music great soundtrack with vaughn williams's fantasia on a theme by thomas tallis the Tudor composer.

So we get these lovely shots of this great ship carving through the seas and this wonderful Tudor influenced music as the backdrop.

I don't think I've watched that.